


A Fondness for Monsters

by PermianExtinction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Rebels: Servants of the Empire - Jason Fry
Genre: (Cause it's Brendol/Kitchen Woman), Belligerent Sexual Tension, Brendol Wants To Stick His Nose In Forbidden Inquisitor… Secrets, F/M, Femdom, Infidelity, Is My Tag For Don't Worry He's Not An Abusive Dad, Jedi Mind Tricks Don’t Work On Me Only Horny, Mild Kink, Sympathetic Brendol Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: Commandant Brendol Hux is caught sneaking around his own academy after the visiting Inquisitors have set a curfew.(Ironically by the woman who would one day infiltrate the Academy in secret herself, disguised as a kitchen worker.)
Relationships: Armitage Hux's Mother/Brendol Hux
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	A Fondness for Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> You don't have to read [The Empire Needs Children](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7843036/chapters/17906938) to get the gist of this story, and in fact reading this one first and then following up with the longfic out of curiosity seems like a perfectly good order to me. But this fic is canon with that one.

One evening, without warning, a large number of the Imperial Inquisitorius arrived for a secret meeting at Arkanis Academy, at least six of them together with their leader, which was unusual because their duties scattered them across the galaxy.

Commandant Brendol Hux had his own plans that he didn’t like to see disrupted like this, so he ignored the Inquisitors’ injunction to allow no one but them in the research facilities that night.

He’d always had a complicated admiration for the Inquisitors’ work. On the one hand, they were destroying what he secretly wanted to protect: the legacy of the Jedi (but knowing they had once been Jedi themselves, he saw value in their work being self-preservation in the era of the Empire).

On the other, their projects brought him closer to the ultimate question he knew needed to be answered before he could bring about his vision of a perfect Jedi-inspired army.

What caused the Dark Side, the ultimate threat to the Jedi? Yes, it was lust for power, cruelty, vanity, impatience, anger, fear, all those things that Brendol could respect as being a natural part of sentient life. He had no qualms encouraging those behaviors in his students even as he schemed about squashing them permanently one day, in the new Order. 

But you could have all those traits and not develop the Dark Side as a power. As he knew well at this point, the Force was not born from the soul alone. It was born from the symbiosis of a being and microscopic organisms that were connected in some way to the fabric of the universe. Those organisms begged to be studied more closely.

He had some of them isolated on an agar dish and needed to know how long they would last without a host. From prior tests it was brief, and then they mysteriously vanished leaving behind energy residue. His experimental results were thus quite time-sensitive.

It thrilled him to be sneaking around the Academy like this. It brought him back to his boyhood, when he would crouch on the surrounding moss-covered bluffs with his macrobinoculars, spying on the Academy back when it was training officers for the Republic, coveting the building like it was a giant, splendid dollhouse.

The lower floor of Area Null, the tall ancient lighthouse turned laboratory set apart from the main academy building by a long bridge, was empty, and no guards had been posted outside. The Inquisitors were confident that any meddling students would be caught by the security system, but the Commandant could override everything. Brendol crept inside and surreptitiously turned on one of the consoles. He downloaded his data onto a portable drive, and slipped it into his sleeve.

He could hear muffled voices arguing from the floor above. He didn’t try to eavesdrop, but he could imagine that someone attempting to spy on the Inquisitors would be successful from this vantage. That meant even being here was a grave offense.

As he left, Brendol’s heart was pounding and the brisk night air validated his excitement; for once the sky was only partly cloudy, not raining, and among the tenebrous shades overhead spilled occasional light from the twin moons, the mixture of gold from one and silver from the other ornamenting the tips of the waves on the surrounding ocean. 

He was several steps away from the tower entrance, starting the furtive return crossing over the bridge, when he knew to turn around, not because of a warning twinge in his gut, because he didn’t get those the way those with the Force could, but because he did not believe the Inquisitors were incompetent. He had been a little too bold, and he was not going to get away with it.

A lithe shadowed shape dropped from a high perch, whirling into position with a graceful flip that was almost too fast for the eye to catch, landing between Brendol and the doorway. 

She held up a finger in a well-understood wagging gesture of disapproval. 

Brendol swallowed hard. You couldn’t get the real thrill of sneaking around without the real risk of being caught. And disciplined.

The Inquisitor had a petite, slim, feminine frame, and yet it was no surprise to Brendol that when she lunged for him and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, right under his throat’s apple, she could swing him around with ease and pin him against the low balustrade of the bridge. He gasped as the air was knocked out of his lungs.

She could have used the Force at a distance to throw him, but then she wouldn’t have had this opportunity to show how her body could utterly dominate his. Her strength was so concentrated in thin fingers and narrow limbs, that having it used against you had unavoidable _sharpness_ , with even steady pressure bruising like a punch.

Without a word, the Sister ruthlessly eased him backwards, until much of his upper body was hanging over the choppy waters that concealed a shallow shore encrusted with sharp rocks. Being thrown off the bridge would not, unless luck was on his side, be a playful dunking. 

But even as his heart betrayed him by continuing its wild rhythm, Brendol could make a quick, cold assessment and take advantage of the position he was in. His hands were already almost behind his back, clutching the balustrade in an attempt to maintain balance. 

He adjusted his wrist and let the datastick slip from his sleeve and drop over the edge. The splash when it hit the waves did not made any discreet noise over the rush of the night surf. 

Did that mean it wasn’t audible to someone with supernaturally honed senses? He couldn’t be certain. But if the datastick settled unnoticed among the rocks in the silt, a certain many-armed and gelatinous friend of his who lived along the shore could be convinced to find it and return it to him. 

Brendol Hux was on good terms with the vithca, the creature that lurked in the shallows around the shore, the one that ate the occasional nerf calf and would have given a cadet’s leg a munch too if any were so bold as to go into the water. 

He had to admit he’d always had a fondness for monsters. 

The Inquisitor’s grip was so tight that it was not intimidating but reassuring, because she could never drop him unless she wanted to, no matter how far she bent him over the edge. Brendol’s knees were going jelly-soft, but not from terror. He knew that his trespassing had to be punished, but he had never been in _such_ close proximity to one of the few adepts of the Force the Empire granted amnesty and authority to.

He was beholding a precious specimen of an endangered species. A former Jedi. 

Even in the dark, Brendol easily recognized the shape and markings on the helmet, such as the lines of pale spots on the sides, and knew it was the First Sister, perhaps the most powerful of the group, he’d heard, even surpassing her master. 

Did that make her the deadliest to cross? He’d overheard murmurs suggesting she was fickle and capricious.

Without warning, she yanked him away from the balustrade and forced him to his knees. Her saber hilt brushed his cheek, and with it a knuckle of one of her fingers, as she shifted her grip.

The blade seared alight beside his ear, humming like a rip in space itself. 

“ _Hand it over. What you took_.”

Her voice was distorted by a vocoder that twisted and bent the pitch and gave it a mangled, crunchy texture. It was musical, but like the notes played in the creaks of wood or metal architecture. 

Brendol gave a strained smile. The saber sizzling next to his ear made it impossible to shake his head, but nodding was still viable, which was amusingly appropriate. There was no option to deny her.

But he had to do it; he didn’t have the datastick anymore. “How about I bring it to you in the morning?” he brazenly asked. “I promise it was nothing special.”

She growled quietly, and the sound was accented by the vocoder with squeaking clicks of feedback.

“What’s the matter? I can’t stop you from searching me,” he said, heart pulsing faster and now, shamefully, pumping blood in a very particular direction, downward, into his core. She could strip him down and leave him shivering in the night breeze, and find nothing but perhaps proof of his indecent _fascination_ with the power she had over him, although there was one power that she could not use.

Her free hand hovered and trembled impotently in front of his brow. Then it tightened into a fist and dropped.

It would have been an agonizing, dreadful violation, and yet… to feel her mind digging into his, probing for information… he almost regretted it was impossible. No Force user had ever managed it with him before. 

Stymied, she seized a hank of his hair and pulled his head up and back, exposing his throat. Brendol drew only shallow breaths through his nose. 

Her saber edged closer to his skin. The heat brought beads of sweat to his temples.

It would hurt but — he’d never touched a lightsaber blade before. It wasn’t the worst curiosity to have on your planned list of experiences before you died. With the Inquisitors around, it could always be bumped up to the _last_ experience on the list. He didn’t think she would kill him over a transgression like this, but she could certainly brand him, at least temporarily char a mark onto his neck.

“I dropped it in the water,” he hoarsely admitted.

The First Sister still held him up, adjusting the angle of her blade as if searching for the right spot to burn his flesh.

How did she expect him to say anything useful with her fingers clutching his hair, tugging on his scalp, causing electric waves of sensation to course down his spine?

“You don’t believe me,” he strained, trying not to let his throat brush the red saber blade, “because you didn’t see it? We all fall for a sleight of hand trick now and again—” 

She shoved him back and vaulted over the side of the balustrade. 

Brendol wanted to give a futile warning about how it was close to low tide, that the water was shallower now than it appeared. There were still gaps between the rocks, but it would be like threading a needle. 

The First Sister cut into the waves like an arrow and vanished. 

A coward would have used this moment to his advantage and fled, but a moonstruck fool would have lingered.

Brendol struck a balance and strode at his normal self-assured pace towards the end of the bridge. 

Of course, before he’d reached the mainland, a shadow scampered out of the water onto the rocks with terrifying speed and accuracy and sprung up onto the bridge to block his path.

The First Sister was dripping wet and had clumps of aquatic vegetation hanging off her shoulders. She held the datastick between thumb and forefinger, presenting it to him.

Finding it so quickly? Now that was impressive. She must have realized exactly when Brendol let it fall and calculated where it would come to rest as soon as she went below the surface. 

Now he was grateful that she couldn’t read his mind, because he was suppressing a mad, audacious grin. He was thinking of the many times as a young man he’d thrown gliding discs far out over the ocean for his ferocious tentacled vithca friend to fetch and retrieve. 

“That’s it,” he said. “You’ll see the data has today’s timestamp…” 

The First Sister slowly plucked one of the flat fibrous strips of kelp off her shoulder—

“… I apologize if I’ve inconvenienced you, such a minor concern…”

—and with a swift backhand swing, slapped him across the face with it. 

Brendol flinched and gasped spat out flecks of salt water. His mouth and cheek were actually stinging and tingling, though of course there was no ache, no deeper bruising. It was no whip or belt. It was seaweed. That was presumably the point.

Rubbing his face, Brendol assumed his cheeks were much redder than they should be from the impact. 

Not that he wasn’t indignant. Not that he was so eager to be told his place.

Even the Inquisitors knew that the Arkanis Academy was _his_ territory, and the First Sister was deliberately toying with him over that. She could have stopped him with mere stern commands, but she didn’t. She was staking her own claim to the tower. And the challenge stirred his loins into an utter frenzy. 

In that moment, he would have given anything to be able to return the favor and pin _her_ to the balustrade, press her body against the carved stone and crush her thin frame with his weight. And then mark her as she’d threatened to mark him. But with his teeth. And not just on her neck. 

(Maybe she didn’t need psychic access to his mind at this point to detect a hint of those feelings stirring, rising…)

And there was no denying it: that kind of frustration was pretty damned fun.

“Consider me chastened, Sister,” he said quietly.

The Inquisitor tilted her head and rubbed the back of her neck, as if to crack any tension out of it, but it also caused the bottom of her helmet to split vertically over her lips and retract, revealing her mouth and jaw.

Like cracking open a clam’s shell to reveal the delectable interior. 

From the looks of it, she was human. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but only a few of the Inquisitors were.

The light of both moons glinted off her teeth. Pearls.

In a rough whisper. “Don’t try it again. Curiosity killed the tooka-cat.” 

Surely she chose that particular phrase, expecting the response. “But satisfaction brought it back…?” Brendol offered.

The First Sister scoffed and strode past him returning over the bridge to the Area Null tower. Brendol tried to turn to watch her but a strong wind blew at his back, pushing him further up the path towards the Academy building. He caught the message and did not disobey it. No more playing around.

Was it play for her? Aware that a haze of admiration had completely dulled his mind, he struggled to restore some objectivity. He didn’t doubt that all of the threats she made were genuine. Though that certainly didn’t exclude the possibility she was enjoying herself.

Unless she’d never paid him any mind until now, she most assuredly knew he was married. So it was quite all right to hope he’d been in real danger; he probably deserved to have his skin branded scarlet for lingering at all…

(But one day he would be blessed by the opportunity to recognize those lips and jawline again, tracing them reverently, as the woman leaned over him in the dark, her thighs squeezed tight around his hips.

Locks of long hair as red and wavy as the native seaweed spilled over the backs of his hands and tickled his ear. 

“I thought I warned you not to come ‘round here…” she breathed. 

And this time he was caught off guard by how soft a tone she’d saved for him, now that she could be open about what she wanted. His heart soared with fondness, but he needed something else to sate a long-burgeoning ache.

“Please,” he groaned. “Don’t let me get away with it.”)


End file.
